Beacon Wealthcare |

03 Jun Minimizing “Uncle Sam’s Cut”

Posted at 14:19h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

Understanding the actual performance of your investment portfolio is harder than it should be. Investments typically show returns net-of-expenses, but often fail to show how much of the gain the expenses consumed. This is especially important when an investor or advisor is using active stock...

07 May Bitcoin is…

Posted at 12:13h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

One of the great financial crisis movies is Margin Call. Set over one night at a Wall Street investment bank during the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis, the film unpacks the moral pressure, fear, and self-interest that drive the characters as the collapse...

26 Mar Geopolitics Revisited

Posted at 12:16h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote about the impact of geopolitics on investing. At the time, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a little over two years old, Israel had suffered a terrorist attack by Hamas six months earlier, and Iran had recently launched a...

18 Feb The Monetization of Free Time

Posted at 20:52h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

The idea of free time has been on my mind a lot over the last few months, so today's brief is more of a personal reflection than anything else. Hopefully you'll humor me. My son, Jack, recently turned 13 and Emily and I decided it was...